Librarian to admit DUI in front of students

STOCKTON - The city's librarian, Christopher Freeman, said Friday that he is preparing to plead guilty before a group of students following his misdemeanor arrest earlier this year on suspicion of drunken driving.

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By Scott Smith

recordnet.com

By Scott Smith

Posted Mar. 9, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By Scott Smith

Posted Mar. 9, 2013 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

STOCKTON - The city's librarian, Christopher Freeman, said Friday that he is preparing to plead guilty before a group of students following his misdemeanor arrest earlier this year on suspicion of drunken driving.

Freeman, 42, will participate April 8 in a Choices and Consequences program, where he will stand before eighth-graders in a local school along with a judge and a prosecutor.

He is expected to express his guilt and remorse. The judge will then sentence him to jail for two to 15 days, and a bailiff will handcuff him before leading him away.

"It seemed like a valuable way I can demonstrate what I've learned," Freeman said. "I feel like it was a bad mistake on my part. I'm trying to do what I can to rectify it."

A California Highway Patrol officer on patrol in Stockton arrested Freeman at 1 a.m. on Jan. 12, his defense attorney, Gil Somera, said. Freeman was pulled over for driving above the 35 mph speed limit on Pershing Avenue, near the University of the Pacific and Freeman's home.

Freeman was placed under arrest and charged with having a blood-alcohol content of greater than 0.08 percent, the legal limit. Somera declined to state his client's exact blood-alcohol content and seeks to have it suppressed from the public.

Somera said Freeman's participation in the educational program will cause the judge to give him some leniency. The sentence could also include a $2,800 fine, three years of probation and possibly a suspended license, Somera said.

"We get the defendant up in front of the kids and he says, 'Look, this has been an embarrassment,' " said Somera, noting that eighth-grade students are at an especially impressionable age.

Freeman said he has felt the ramifications of his arrest in his personal life, but it has not interfered with his job performance.

"Obviously, I realized that it was a really poor decision on my part," he said.

Since 2010, Freeman has overseen the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library as deputy director of the city's Department of Community Services. In 2012, he earned $104,367 in gross pay.

Freeman remains on the job and this week attended a two-day conference on behalf of the city, said Stockton spokeswoman Connie Cochran, who declined to comment further.

"To the degree that there is any impact on an employee's jobs, these situations are addressed as confidential personnel matters," she said.